


i have given empire without end

by Oreki



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/strange fake
Genre: Again, Gen, Introspection, may or may not be in line with the actual epic of gilgamesh, mostly about uruk and everything that happened. may or may not be in line with actual fate lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 18:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12114714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oreki/pseuds/Oreki
Summary: Maybe that was their first folly.





	i have given empire without end

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone. i wrote this at twelve o'clock midnight instead of doing my math homework, and while crying a little bit. i hope you enjoy. i am incredibly new to the fate fandom yet enkidu just grabbed me by the throat and won't let me go. thank you  
> it is all introspection and summary... again.

Enkidu was made by the gods to be a monster, a weapon. Creation of Aruru, that which was to kill unrighteous kings. They held the form of a beast, and indeed the mind of one as well.

But they changed, somewhere along the way, and took on the form of humans on their own — maybe that was their first folly. Their first infraction in what would be a long list of crimes against those who created them. To imitate something that they were not, and what they could not be; something as foolish as that would naturally lead to their downfall. Turning away from the wellspring in the cedar forest, the scent of  _ human _ wafting from them, enough to scare the wild dogs and the birds and the ungulates, was surely enough for the gods to cast them aside. Following the voice they heard from the walls of Uruk, the same. Yet, at night, as now, when they can’t sleep, Enkidu remembers what it was for.

Uruk is a beautiful city in their memory, and Enkidu knows they remember correctly: their memory is sharp, even when they would prefer it not to be. Uruk, with its high buildings, solid and angular and lit up with ochre as the sun set over the Euphrates. Uruk, bustling with so many colors during the day, crowded with people in the market wearing blue, red, green, violet,  _ gold. _ Uruk, quiet and peaceful with the lapping of the water on the shore in the morning, the dark sky only beginning to turn a faint shade of slate-blue with the amber light seeping up from the horizon.

During the long hours of the night, when the passing time makes their skin hot and uncomfortable and their eyes stare sightless up at the white ceilings in Chaldea, they find that they miss looking at the stars most of all. In Sumeria, four thousand years ago, the stars were so clear and bright, so real, so close, in a way that made it seem that they were dangling right in front of their face, and if Enkidu reached a hand out they might be able to touch them. To them, back then, the distance only seemed so great because now they had become  _ human _ , and the thought would make them laugh, sometimes waking up Gil beside them, and he would tell them to be quiet, that some people were trying to sleep. They would stop laughing with a hand over their mouth, and merely smile back up at the stars, reflected down in the water.

It didn’t last, though. As surely as the night is consumed by the light of the sun the next morning, as surely as a king’s treasury must deplete, a god’s weapon can never linger past its time in the mortal realm. For a while, it felt like it would last forever, that the passing of time was something that could be stopped by a wave of the Hero-King’s hand, that he — that they — that the city of Uruk would last forever, with its ochre sunsets and slate sunrises and blooms of color in the market and its bright, close stars, just the way it had been when Enkidu had first laid human eyes on it.

When the blood of Humbaba splashed upon Enkidu’s hands, they already knew that that time was going to come to an end. The knowledge that they always had, yet never wanted. Perhaps that was the first time that they had ever cried. They couldn’t even put words to why, when Gil asked them, but all they knew was that the cedar forest was missing something now, something that was precious to it. It was missing a part, a piece, no matter how small, that made it into the perfect, flawed place that it was forever intended to be. Enkidu was the one who helped to defeat it; yet, while the regret of it wasn’t what weighed down their heart, they still cried, onto cooling fur and mourning ground, and the cedar forest cried with them, tears that couldn’t be seen but that could be felt, even among the gods. 

When Ishtar arrived in Uruk, powerful in stride and commanding in all that she bore around her, that would signal the beginning of the end. In retrospect, it’s funny to Enkidu that they remember the least of this part: they don’t even recall the eve on which Gil refused the goddess. Perhaps they had gone out, as normal in the evenings, to watch the last rays of the sun over the valley, and by the time they returned, their life already would have been falling apart, even if at the time, they hadn’t known. 

It’s funny that after seven years, after defeating the divine bull, called down by Ishtar’s wrath, they didn’t feel the deep, heavy sadness that they felt in the cedar forest, but a sense of rising, beautiful euphoria. It’s funny that they remember smiling and laughing so widely that night, rejoicing that they and Gil were alive, there, and that they’d both made it. It’s funny that they would go out the next morning, content, and watch the sun rise over the waters of the Euphrates, without knowing that in mere days, the gods would decide to strike them down.

They didn’t cry, not that time, when they realized they were going to die. Enkidu thinks that they laughed, wryly, in acceptance of the gods’ ruling. A broken weapon of the gods naturally would expire, wouldn’t it? When a tool does not do its job, it is simply taken back.

But as they were dying, they would hear that voice that they heard when they were first created, telling them, “In all this world, only one shall be my friend. Thus — not for all eternity will his worth ever change.”

Worth.

What was a simple clay doll worth? What was a spear worth, what was a weapon worth? Enkidu was merely one of those things. Not human, not living, even if they emulated the beating of a human heart and the rasp of human breathing to their very end.

They smiled, and told Gil that they wanted to explore the world longer with him, and then nothing more. They should have said more.

Dolls don’t need to sleep. Neither do Heroic Spirits, which just makes for a double layer of not needing to sleep; and on nights when they don’t, when their skin is hot and prickles with the empty uncomfortability of the early morning hours, they look out the window and they miss the stars. The stars that seemed so close that they could touch them with outstretched fingertips if they wanted — the world that spread before them. 

They miss home.

 


End file.
